After a while, the Sea of the Void began to thin.
An entire field of stars opened before them.
From a distance, they looked alive.
The light pulsed slowly, as if enormous hearts were beating in a single rhythm.
Ieva pressed her palm to the porthole.
“They’re beautiful.”
Aronas didn’t answer.
He changed course.
The ship dove quietly deeper into the star field.
The closer they drew, the more the beauty crumbled.
The light still traveled.
But it was old.
So old that the star itself had ceased to exist long ago.
The monitors showed the same thing.
The cores had gone dark.
Some no longer existed at all.
Only the light still traveled through the cosmos, refusing to admit its source had died thousands of years before.
“Why are they still shining?” Ieva asked.
Aronas closed his eyes briefly.
“Because the Universe is in no hurry to deliver bad news.”
He stepped up to the glass.
Watched one of the brightest stars.
“Sometimes all that’s left is the habit of shining.”
Ieva was silent for a long time.
The star looked so alive that it was hard to trust the instruments.
“Could they have been saved?”
Aronas shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
A moment later he added:
“Some burn out slowly. No one notices it from outside.”
He turned and left the cabin.
Ieva was left alone.
She looked at the screen once more.
The numbers didn’t change.
Temperature — zero.
Reactions — none.
Core — dead.
Only the light kept traveling.
That evening she sat in her cabin for a long time without turning off the lamp.
Even when the light began to strain her eyes, she still didn’t switch it off.
Before sleep, she looked at her reflection in the dark window.
It seemed strangely dim.
For the first time, it struck her that perhaps a person, too, could keep shining for a long time out of pure habit.
Or perhaps some burn out long before anyone else notices.
The next morning, she woke even before the ship’s signal.
Her first action wasn’t to check the course.
She went to the mirror.
For a while she looked at herself in silence.
Then she turned away.
All that day, she kept feeling she could work better.
Calculate trajectories more precisely.
Answer Aronas’s questions faster.
Make fewer mistakes.
That evening, when he praised her correction to the route, she felt a relief she couldn’t explain.
As if some small star inside her had briefly lit up again.